


Ready

by nowstfucallicles



Category: Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: Canon Divergence: they are not related, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 02:56:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowstfucallicles/pseuds/nowstfucallicles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just before heading out for LA, Reese wants to see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready

**Author's Note:**

> Slash. No incest though.  
> Don't own the characters.  
> Unbeta-ed.

He heard a sound from the door, then another and he knew who it was. No emergency had shown on his screens and no other man would have come to him this time of day. He got up from the desk and opened the vault.

“Sir. I thought you’d be still up.”

“Reese. Come in.”

With a quick nod Reese stepped in, ducking past the cables. He had shed most of his gear, only carrying a holster and the comm. The countdown to Chrono had just dropped below 4 hours. With preparation finished most of the base was resting, and on his last round John had sensed the familiar stillness over the corridors. The wait before battle. 

“Everything’s quiet,” Reese said. “Nothing unusual. It doesn’t see us coming.” 

John closed the steel door and gave the lock a spin. “No. We made sure of that.”

“ _You_ made sure of that." Reese moved to the desk, taking his usual spot, and he studied briefly the screens with their steady signals before turning back around. 

John looked him over. He looked tired, pale, yet there was an energy about him, an unwavering confidence, even now. He is ready, John thought. There was a dim satisfaction in knowing that. He walked up to Reese, leaning against the desk, and for a moment they both watched the run of the countdown. 

“If it can end tonight, it will.” 

“It will.” Reese nodded. Almost as if he knew it, the same way that John did. “We’ve never been here before. We’ve never been this close.”

John gave him a stale smile and Reese pulled a small metal box from his pocket. He opened it, and it held one single cigarette, a filtered one from the old world. “To the fall of the machine,” he said, holding it up to John as if to toast. John took it in his hand, examining it with some wonder.

“An old man gave it to me,” Reese said. “From the last camp we busted. Thought this’d be a good time.”

“Haven’t had one in years.”

Reese pulled out a lighter, waiting for him. “To the fall of the machine,” John muttered and watched him light the crooked yet dry thing. He inhaled at once, trapping the smoke in his lungs. Letting it bite somewhat.

“As a kid I kept sneaking outside whenever I could,” Reese said. “Looking for stuff. Metal, scraps. I’d always look for smokes, for you. Never found any.”

John felt a pull, an echo of past years, scattered memories. Reese, as a small kid with dirt on his face and a vest hanging from his shoulder, standing by his side. That small kid he had made sure to be raised at the base, that he had never let out of his sight. Not even when he was sneaking onto the surface. In those darker times of war, when this day had been far away, he had still sometimes seen him as no more than that. As a kid growing up on the battlefield. A kid he was teaching to survive.

He inhaled and passed back the cigarette.

“Not even one. And you still ended up in recon.” 

Reese took a drag, handing it right back. “Had a pretty good instructor.” 

He turned his head, watching John with a slight grin. 

John held the stub in his hand, its burn towards his palm. He had taught him himself, not trusting anyone else to prepare him for what he needed to be prepared for. Knowing the machine. Knowing what it was, what it could do. And what it wasn’t. So he had trained him, before morning and in the lull of war, the same way that he had been trained as a kid. And Reese had been quick enough to learn. He let the smoke settle in his lungs, exhaling flatly. After a while he had understood why his mother had lied about Reese. Claimed him to be his father. That she had not trusted him after all, not entirely, to raise Reese and prepare him for the job, if not for that lie. Yet he had. 

“Haven’t been easy on you,” he said. 

“Hell no. Hadn’t been you if you had.” Reese’s grin widened for a moment and then he held in, his eyes wandering to the back of the room. Turning the words over in his head. “You said before you never thanked me. And I think I never did.”

“There’s nothing you have to thank me for.” 

John held out the cigarette and Reese’s hand settled on his as he took it.

“Come on, John.”

He looked at Reese, at length this time. He had made him stronger and better than anyone could have, in these years. He had trained him for what was ahead, raised him for this one mission, and when the time came he would send him off. He had known this from the beginning. The circle would close. Reese would find his mother and keep her safe, and keep all they had won since then safe with her. 

At the same time, it was almost new. And it turned something in him, the thought of sending Reese off. A slow cold was moving along his spine, the slow certainty that something he could not give up on was beyond saving, and would be beyond saving, for him. He had kept Reese alive, taught him to keep himself alive, only to have him fall at the right time. Only for the Nexus. And for the first time he felt it, felt the first flicker of a pain he had thought long lost. Like a wound that had hardened splitting at the seams. 

“I’ve learned so much from you,” Reese said. “Still do. All these things you know, that you see coming. We wouldn’t be here without you. I know I wouldn’t.”

“That goes both ways.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Reese had stepped closer to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But if I ever get to change that, I will.”

John glanced at the hand on his shoulder and Reese pressed his arm, hard, before letting go. There was a shift in his eyes that John had not seen in a while. A sharp, lingering glint. He knew that a long time ago something unspoken had settled between them. Small, familiar motions, here and there a heated, lingering gaze. Almost an offer. Reese wanted him because he knew and saw little else. He wanted him because he did not know any better. John had always dismissed it. It had always been easy to dismiss.

“I’m off now.” Reese squinted slightly. “I’ll go by the guards on the lower levels, just in case. And then maybe catch a few minutes of sleep.”

He checked the screens one more time and then handed back what was left of the smoke.

John took it from him, leaning over and looking him in the eye. He stubbed it out on the desk and then he kissed him, suddenly and hard. He felt Reese go still, his lips plump and warm, ready, and he knew it would take him another moment, he knew he would catch up soon. Reese shifted and then he met him with sudden, rushed hunger. He pressed forward, opening his mouth, and it was not like John had thought it would be, but simpler, less contained. He pushed back into Reese, knocking away his hands. 

He had never seen him like this, face flushed and teeth bared, his eyes dark and wide. He was holding John’s gaze, even as John backed him against the wall and his hips bucked from meeting him halfway. His legs shifting to give him better access. John began grinding against him, roughly, deliberately at first, and then he reached down, shoving a hand under Reese’s belt. He had never heard his breath hitch before. Reese’s warm dick in his hand, the way he slightly winced at the grip. The way he started pumping into it. John took it all in. He worked him without tenderness, fast, and before long Reese had caught up once more, stroking him with a draining urgency. 

John shoved him back against the wall, and it did numb the splitting of the seams, it did fill him with something other than that, for a short while. Reese cursed, tensing up and shuddering, coming shortly before him and palming him even as he did. And even as John already began to lean away. 

He watched Reese catch his breath, leant back against the wall, and eventually he gave him a kiss on the head. Taking with him the sharp, warm smell that was Reese. Then he stepped back, giving way to the door. 

Reese straightened himself, fumbling for a moment yet taking the cue. He stepped around John, brushing him on his way out. When he had turned the lock, he stood there for another few seconds, looking back at John with a loose grin and bright eyes. 

“See ya up there,” he said.

John nodded with a smile. Then it just came to him. He wanted to hear it, he was not sure why. He just did. “You ready?”

And Reese hovered for another moment, just behind the closing door.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Love all kinds of comments.


End file.
